I was probably in my teens before I realized that didn’t like the fact that I don’t know Japanese. Until then, it’d just been another language that other people knew and I didn’t. My dad knew ancient Greek and ancient Hebrew (and a whole host of other long-dead languages), and I didn’t, and that wasn’t a problem. My ballet teacher and his pianist spoke Russian, and I didn’t, and that wasn’t a problem (though I did learn a few words, and the alphabet). I was learning Latin and French, but I didn’t know them as well as my dad and my mom, and that wasn’t a problem. My parents both spoke Japanese, and I didn’t, and all of a sudden, this was a source of frustration.

I realized that it wasn’t okay with me that I needed parents to mediate if I wanted to talk to one whole branch of my family. At the same time, though, it seemed like such a monumental task to learn that particular language. I knew I’d drive myself nuts by not getting the accent right. (I can’t understand many words, but because I grew up around the language, a bad accent is like nails on a chalkboard.) I was also intimidated by the challenge of learning two syllabaries and a character set. And I think there was an element of not wanting to struggle to learn something that my parents just knew. I’m also just not really great at learning languages, though I do love them.

Well… yesterday I took the plunge and ordered a course in Japanese from Rosetta Stone, and today I bought a Japanese-English/English-Japanese dictionary. I think it’s finally time to admit that I’ll never learn this language by wishing it. It’ll take work. And it’ll be worth it.

I’m so excited. Why am I also nervous?

Ever since graduate school, I seem to have lost the capacity to read for pleasure without great effort. It’s the only thing I regret about my education.

Until entering college, reading was a huge part of my life and my education (and in my case life and education were even more closely related than most people’s because I was taught at home until college). My mom had a degree in literature, and my dad was well versed in the classical history and literature, so I was well steeped in books.

Then I got to college. Suddenly, reading was “assigned” rather than suggested. But I got through it. Every summer I’d take the first two weeks of summer break to read what I termed “mind-candy”… that stuff that’s fun and engrossing but has very little literary merit. That’d kick-start me into loving to read again.

Studying literature in graduate school was fun. There were so many nuances, so many implications, so many connections, so many EVERYTHING, and all the people in my seminars came to class ready and able to discuss our readings in depth (which had decidedly not been the case in undergrad). But there was so MUCH of this reading (3-5 books every week, plus all the other work of graduate school) that I began to associate reading with a tiring activity, something to be gotten through before I could get to the analysis part of things. That was the first fatal blow to my ability to read for pleasure.

The second fatal blow came when I moved away from my family. I was just too raw and vulnerable to open myself up to the fundamentally empathetic experience of reading.

I’m still mostly unable to read at home. I don’t know why that is, but it just never seems to happen unless it’s a very special book (and I’m apparently VERY picky about what makes a book special). But I’ve begun to set aside at least an hour every Sunday at a coffee shop. And there, devoid of the pressures of Things To Do or the siren’s call of my laptop or TV, I’ve rediscovered the ability to read.

And this week I’ve found The Book, the one that reminded me that amazing writing still happens, still stirs the deepest corners of my imagination, and still tugs at my thoughts when I’m prevented from reading (like when I’m at work but would like nothing more than to close my office door and snuggle in a corner with that book). Even better than the joy of experiencing this book is the joy of proving to myself that I haven’t been deluding myself into remembering a power that never existed.

P.S. I’m assuming that since you’re most likely a librarian, reading this, you’ll probably also want a reference to the book itself. Well, I don’t like to recommend books that I’ve really enjoyed (an aversion that started when working in a bookstore, ironically enough), so I’ve come up with a workaround. Here is the short list of my 7 favorite books. It’s one of those.

Last night I went to a hangar dance — one of those dances held in airport hangars where lots of people dress in WWII era clothes and dance to WWII era music… or just show up and swing dance. The evening could have been a disaster. The music was too slow (even when we requested upbeat music, they played it at half speed), and even though most of my favorite dancers were there the bitter cold seems to have kept most people away.

And yet we managed to have a really good time anyway. For one thing, the trombone player looked and acted exactly like Oscar Madison from the Odd Couple. He sat slouched in his chair with his legs crossed in that lazy middle-aged-man way and improvised his way through an entire evening of music. Once he even took the microphone and crooned to us in a most Oscar-like way. As we sat on the sidelines and waited for dance-able music, we’d do Oscar imitations and send ourselves into stitches. “I want you out of here, Felix! Out!”

Another highlight was having somebody who’d been there for the dinner portion of the night come up to me and ask the name of our dance troupe. We all danced so well, she said, that she thought we were affiliated with a reenactment group. Cool! I’ve been mistaken for a professional dancer!!

But what really saved the evening from being a $10/3-hour-round-trip/bad-music disaster was the group of people I got to hang out with. If you have to sit out 8 out of every 10 dances, it sure helps if you’re sitting out with a bunch of really fun people.

Every once in a while, to renew my grasp on sanity, I give myself a “brain vacation day.” I’m still at work, and I still do work, but I give myself permission not to tackle the really hard projects. I only work on the fun projects, or the little clearing-up projects that always get put off during the headlong rush through the term.

Today is one of those days. I couldn’t tackle a hard project if I tried, so I won’t try. I’ll recharge, reacquaint myself with my surroundings and my thoughts, get a bunch of little things done, and generally assess my progress on the things that need to get done soon. When this day is over, I’ll have a better sense of what needs to happen for the next few days, and in what order it needs to happen.